I know many of you are thinking Aftab went to a Japanese restaurant? Don’t they mainly serve fish and sushi? Yes. You’re right. However, I wanted to prove that a non-seafood eater can enjoy a Japanese restaurant as much as any other person. Well, I say Japanese, it’s more Nikkei which is a Japanese-Peruvian fusion. Especially when the menu is so vast and filled with many other alternatives. That’s just one of the reasons I loved UNI in Victoria.
The Dynamic Duo set out to Victoria, yet again. We were only there days before at Mango Tree, another lovely oriental restaurant. Clearly Victoria is the place to be, i’m sure Angie will agree with me – since it’s her ‘hood’.
UNI is a small, intimate restaurant with a cosy feel factor, that makes you just want to rush out of the rain and cold into a snuggly booth. Warm your cockles on something alcoholic and settle down for some good flavoursome food.
Binny and I were feeling a couple of martini’s to kickstart our meal at UNI. Starting with cucumber and watermelon martini’s, we literally felt like we should be on a tropical island drinking these, as apposed to grey London.
Binny’s cucumber martini was a more of a refreshing and light drink, where as my watermelon martini was more sweet (just like me 😉 no?)
We started light with chilli and garlic edamame. It’s one of my favourite ways to start a meal, however this dish is on a whole new level compared to Wagamama’s for example. The chilli and garlic is literally smothered around eat edamame bean, giving you the full intense flavour in each bean. Deeeelicious!
Alongside our edamame, we ordered some prawn and wagyu beef gyoza. Now i’m not a fan of prawns, but both the prawns and beef was grinded up together so you couldn’t even taste the prawn. In fact, all you would taste was yummy spiced filling with the texture of beef coming through. Served with little cubes of fresh mango, when eaten together complimented the gyoza so well.
As i’ve mentioned many times before on my blog, cod is one of the few fishes I will eat. Combined with my sweet tooth, this miso cod was heaven. Thick chunky white fish, with a delicious sticky miso glazed around it with certain crispy areas – which I love! I won’t pretend like it didn’t happen, because it did… but Binny and I ate the fish on it’s own. No sides, no nothing. It was perfect in its entirety.
Ironically i’m a bit of a fish when it comes to drinks, so we were ready for round two before we really got deep into our mains. Sadly they don’t serve Moët and Chandon Brut by the glass, so we settled for a glass of rose Moët. Cheers!
After a delicious fish dish, things could only get better with their meat dishes and I was so right! The lamb cutlets with miso antiucho, steamed broccoli & cancha corn were melt in your mouth delicious. So many extravagant flavours that have clearly come from well marinated meat. Simply gorgeous!
The teriyaki chicken kushiyaki skewers were a real classic. Slightly chewier than expected, however the flavours definitely made up for it.
To accompany our meat dishes, we ordered some asparagus that was cooked al dente. Simple but ideal. The miso aubergine was the highlight though, coming from some one who doesn’t generally like aubergine. However, a few restaurants I have recently visited are really changing that. The aubergine was light, creamy and completely enjoyable – especially with the crispy skin! Mmmm.
For desserts, I went for the chocolate mousse – not expecting it to be as big as it was but a nice sweet way to finish the meal. Binny ordered the pistachio ice-cream which was more up my street. Next time I go to UNI, i’ll be ordering that for dessert!
Overall, a wonderful meal with amazingly scrumptious food. I’ve never been so impressed from start to finish purely because of the quality and taste of the food. Also really impressed that I managed to get through the meal with minimal seafood, which was an extra bonus. Definitely a restaurant my parents would love, so I know where to take them when they visit next.
Star Rating for UNI:
Until next time…
